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Elon Musk: Universal Basic Income will be necessary

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disappoint said:
Do you like apples? Neither you nor Mongrel were able to form a cogent argument against what I said so you attack me with an ad hominem accusing me of having a "very poorly skewed outlook on life in general". Do either of you realize what a poorly skewed outlook on life in general that makes YOU seem to have? I don't agree with what this guy has to say so I'm going to attack him instead of pointing out why what he said is wrong? You are a fool for following down his path. How you like them apples?

Now ordinarily I wouldn't make the stupid mistake of using this tactic of ad hom attack like calling someone a fool, but some folks are unable to see faults in themselves while having no difficulty at all detecting faults in others. So I thought I'd give you an apple so that you might see. Who knew apples were so good for your vision? Of course I'm not talking about vision using your eyes.
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You're right. I was being lazy. I didn't want to mount a cogent argument against your familiarity thingi because I foresaw a huge amount of work involved and then having to deal with a rebuttal. I will simply say that your argument looked like nonsense to me because what I would attribute the desire to continue smoking even though you know it's unhealthy is because nicotine is addictive. It creates a craving that takes over your reasoning process and will play any trick if you will just ease that craving. I see this as a chemical event in the brain that has nothing at all to do with smoking because it's familiar. There is also a physical habit of reaching for one's smoke that is habituated, but again habituation and liking the familiar are not the same thing in my opinion. If you disagree, fine, but I don't want to spend any more time on this. Again, my apologies.
 
Hayabusa Rider said:
But the government subsidizes by taxes on the producers, which get their funds from employment and the production of goods and services. When all of that is gone just how does that work?
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I meant the current level of industry we have. Even the first railroad was started with government subsidy in the form of bonds as well as free Army support crossing through Indian Territory.

As to how it works if that future were to be realized? Harder to answer, probably just resource control and allocation, as money is kind of moot.
 
greatnoob said:
The entire point is that businesses will be taxed and money will be transferred from efficient, high output->high profit businesses that can afford to automate production, to the workers that will lose their jobs. I don't understand where you got government subsidies from or how this is even remotely related to a type of social welfare floor Musk is talking about.
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greatnoob said:
Low- skill human labour that is replaced with capital is what I'm talking about. Not everybody is going to be jobless all of a sudden. Automation happens gradually and mostly in retail and manufacturing sorts of businesses. You'll still have high-skill jobs like programmers, engineers, doctors, lawyers and a plethora of ones I can't think of ATM. These people will be spending money while low-skilled, high-labour workers would be made redundant.
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You answered it for me. There will still be many skilled workers to tax; they will be taxed to support unskilled workers, in turn to support businesses that make a living out of manufacturing increasingly cheap goods. It's a form of corporate welfare.
 
momeNt said:
This level of industry can't be supported without enormous government subsidy. So I think that is why they are all part of the "solution" (problem).
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Business/profit/income is taxed for social ends because the invisible hand evidently can't be trusted to do the right thing.

It's pretty ironic that a forcibly socialist/communist education system ended up fertilizing the capitalist system.

As to this thread, we already subsidize anyone making minimal wage, by forcing businesses to pay at least that much for any labor, and making regs (like tax code) to provide those businesses opportunity for profit. That's merely a difference in degree from just giving poors the money, esp. in a fiat money system.
 
HamburgerBoy said:
In this context, universal basic income is just a nice way of saying government subsidies for owners of the robots (aka guys like Musk). UBI is completely unaffordable unless you kill most/all other government subsidies, and if you do that, it actually hurts the poor the most, those that take far more in benefits than they pay back. imo the more realistic doom and gloom scenario (assuming people can't simply find work in robotics and the world keeps moving forward) is that people basically have all the material goods they could want thanks to cheap, decentralized alternative energy and personal robots/servants, and demand for a corporation's goods are cut infinitely thin as worldwide competition brings the production of everything to its most inexpensive potential. As a result, most people sit around being degenerates and only a small minority continue to innovate out of personal motivation. But I don't think that scenario is particularly accurate either (and it's utopian in its own way as a kind of revival of the idyllic 19th century tinkerer/inventor occupation).
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Some smart guy named Max a long time ago thought a lot about capitalism and how it fit into the economy of things. While the tech progress that resulted from public education protracted the prclaimed inevitability of his Hegelian history, it's yet to be determined whether those insights will be wrong in the end.
 
HamburgerBoy said:
You answered it for me. There will still be many skilled workers to tax; they will be taxed to support unskilled workers, in turn to support businesses that make a living out of manufacturing increasingly cheap goods. It's a form of corporate welfare.
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Either businesses or their labour replacing capital will be taxed. Not people.
 
Elon Musk, crony capitalist.

"Elon Musk made his fortune by inventing products commonly used by consumers every day. Now he has resorted to taking billions in government cash and subsidies to work on ideas that probably won't return a profit to the taxpayer. He's using his friendships in government, as well as some high-priced lobbyists, to keep the spigot of government money going his way. Though it has been profitable for him, Musk is a case study in cronyism and a shining example of a rich individual abusing his influence to make taxpayers pay for risky investments."
http://reason.com/archives/2016/04/28/elon-musk-crony-capitalist
 
imported_tajmahal said:
Elon Musk, crony capitalist.

"Elon Musk made his fortune by inventing products commonly used by consumers every day. Now he has resorted to taking billions in government cash and subsidies to work on ideas that probably won't return a profit to the taxpayer. He's using his friendships in government, as well as some high-priced lobbyists, to keep the spigot of government money going his way. Though it has been profitable for him, Musk is a case study in cronyism and a shining example of a rich individual abusing his influence to make taxpayers pay for risky investments."
http://reason.com/archives/2016/04/28/elon-musk-crony-capitalist
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This only makes sense with conservatives who believe all these threads are just arguments from authority like in their world.
 
Hayabusa Rider said:
Given the certainty that jobs will evaporate at all levels then we are going to do something or not and no alternatives are satisfactory. Will Musk be content to live on a few hundred thousand dollars a year while all his effort goes to taxes to support those put out of work? Gates? Soros? Trump? Pick a 0.01 percenter and ask if they will give up not only their income but wealth to be upper middle class? That's what it will eventually take when "income" enters into the discussion.
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US budget, $4 trillion.
$1k/mo UBI, $2.7 trillion.

Where does this notion of taking everything from everyone come from?
UBI is more like a reallocation of what we already tax. Though I'm sure some adjustments are needed.
It is NOT the end of civilization or capitalism as we know it. In fact it may be the only thing that saves capitalism from itself.
 
greatnoob said:
Either businesses or their labour replacing capital will be taxed. Not people.
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Where was that stated? Income tax is currently the largest source of tax revenue, nearly half. Corporate taxes as a share of total tax revenue have been on a perpetual decline for quite a while.
 
The market will make the decision. The market always wins.

Look at Amazon's new store. You go in with your phone. Everything is tracked via your smartphone, No cashiers. No lines. No waiting. Now, will consumers accept this new type of shopping? Or, will they skip going into Amazon's store so they can have a more friendlier environment with actual human beings? IMO, the baby boomers are going to be afraid and intimidated so many will probably skip Amazon's store. But it doesn't matter because they are on the way out. What about the millennials and gen x? Will they accept that there are no human workers at the Amazon store? IMO, many will accept it, so in-turn this will put pressure on other convenience stores to adopt the same tactic.Amazon is selling time. It's what made Uber so successful. Time is very valuable.

When I go to my local convenience store the one thing that's striking is young people aren't purchasing newspapers anymore. It's the baby boomers who are still purchasing newspapers. To a 20 something many view print as a relic of the past. It's the same with TV. How many have stopped watching cable and have gone onto Netflix, video games or You Tube? Even if they are on the couch they are most likely looking at their Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat feeds.

I know I'm a little off topic, but it kinda ties in with the topic. Elon is looking at the habits today of the average "young" consumer and he has the foresight to see where it's all headed. We are entering an era of massive disruption and no one has an answer. Politicians are old and probably don't know much about technology. Look at Trump. He hasn't mentioned automation once. The guy's clueless.
 
HamburgerBoy said:
Where was that stated? Income tax is currently the largest source of tax revenue, nearly half. Corporate taxes as a share of total tax revenue have been on a perpetual decline for quite a while.
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You said this:

HamburgerBoy said:
You answered it for me. There will still be many skilled workers to tax; they will be taxed to support unskilled workers, in turn to support businesses that make a living out of manufacturing increasingly cheap goods. It's a form of corporate welfare.
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You won't be taxing people, just robots or businesses.

It doesn't make sense to tax rich working people when it's the businesses that are investing in more capital. Take away a percentage of the value these robots add to a business as a tax and redistribute that wealth back to the people who need it.
 
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HamburgerBoy said:
Where was that stated? Income tax is currently the largest source of tax revenue, nearly half. Corporate taxes as a share of total tax revenue have been on a perpetual decline for quite a while.
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Recently Bill Gates got some publicity for stating that robot labor should be taxed the same as human labor. There's a case to be made for this even if the two aren't completely comparable.

Also, it's worth noting all your arguments here are predicated on capitalist values of profitable output. Try to keep in mind civilization was created for the purpose of humans, not money.
 
greatnoob said:
You said this:

You won't be taxing people, just robots or businesses.

It doesn't make sense to tax rich working people when it's the businesses that are investing in more capital. Take away a percentage of the value these robots add to a business as a tax and redistribute that wealth back to the people who need it.
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You're talking about a situation where literally everyone can be replaced my robots, I'm talking about the more realistic/immediate scenario where McDonald's cashiers and assembly line workers are replaced. But even considering a scenario where that happens and there are literally no valuable jobs in existence, where a handful of technocrats control all the land and resources, what is the purpose of even maintaining that kind of economy? It defines the entire purpose of currency as being an allotted ticket with which businesses will reward the underlings goods manufactured by them. I don't see how things get from where we are now to there by loss of jobs alone. A system where robots do everything is one where the cost of production is incredibly cheap and flat; one guy develops a new machine or algorithm for making the cheapest widget, everyone else follows suit. As unskilled jobs become increasingly uncommon, you'll see 1) attempts to crack into the poorest markets via the cheapest automated goods (something that already happens) and 2) consumers with money/skilled jobs dictate innovation by putting their money into riskier/higher cost products. It's not like this happens overnight and suddenly no one has jobs, there has to be a logical flow to get to the doomsday scenario imagined.

agent00f said:
Recently Bill Gates got some publicity for stating that robot labor should be taxed the same as human labor. There's a case to be made for this even if the two aren't completely comparable.
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I read that too. Surprisingly, I haven't been able to find where he suggested in the 80s or 90s that personal computers be taxed for all the human labor made obsolete by them. I'm sure I just missed it.
 
agent00f said:
Also, it's worth noting all your arguments here are predicated on capitalist values of profitable output. Try to keep in mind civilization was created for the purpose of humans, not money.
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The best civilizations are those that best put value according to where its participants put it.
 
HamburgerBoy said:
I read that too. Surprisingly, I haven't been able to find where he suggested in the 80s or 90s that personal computers be taxed for all the human labor made obsolete by them. I'm sure I just missed it.
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In all fairness he's using his money not unlike if it were taxed, and arguably more charitably.
 
Jaskalas said:
US budget, $4 trillion.
$1k/mo UBI, $2.7 trillion.

Where does this notion of taking everything from everyone come from?
UBI is more like a reallocation of what we already tax. Though I'm sure some adjustments are needed.
It is NOT the end of civilization or capitalism as we know it. In fact it may be the only thing that saves capitalism from itself.
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So when the majority of people are unemployed how does it work to tax them?
 
Since the markets depend on supply and demand plus the means to satisfy that demand all we have to do is give most of the profit for buying something back to the buyer while fixing prices so that every thing is quite expensive in comparison to production cost. Thus, any time you are short of money you just go buy something and refill your account. In no time at all everybody will be rich and like the 1% now have more than they can ever spend. This would also mean it would be very easy to start a productive business because prices would be set at why more than they cost to produce.

Alternatively we could make all business the property of the state with the people having equal ownership of the robots and an equal share of what they make. Anybody making personal advances in robotic productivity could be rewarded accordingly.
 
Moonbeam said:
Since the markets depend on supply and demand plus the means to satisfy that demand all we have to do is give most of the profit for buying something back to the buyer while fixing prices so that every thing is quite expensive in comparison to production cost. Thus, any time you are short of money you just go buy something and refill your account. In no time at all everybody will be rich and like the 1% now have more than they can ever spend. This would also mean it would be very easy to start a productive business because prices would be set at why more than they cost to produce.
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I hope this is an example of your usual sarcasm.
 
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